Land use suitability screening for power plant sites in Maryland

Since 1974 Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been engaged in developing an automated procedure for land use suitability screening. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has funded the project to aid in the selection of power plant sites in Maryland. Its purpose is to identify candidate areas from which specific candidate sites can be chosen for detailed analyses. The ORNL approach assures that certain key variables are examined empirically for every cell in the study region before candidate sites are selected. Each variable is assigned an importance weight and compatibility score based upon its effect on the economic, social, or ecologic costs associated with construction in a given cell. The weighted scores for each variable are aggregated and output as a suitability score for each cell